Founder and Editor of The Lanchester Review. Previous or occasional contributor to Prime Politics, Comment is Free, The First Post/The Week, Harry's Place, New Directions, The Brussels Journal, The London Progressive Journal, Labour Uncut, The American Conservative and Russia Today (RT). Available for work via davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, all lower case.

Monday, 16 July 2012

The Big Meeting And The Big Tent

Burnhope's
restored banner depicts Durham Cathedral, and those of us proud to march under
it included not only the Labour but also the Independent County Councillor for
the Lanchester Ward that includes Burnhope, and not only Labour Parish
Councillors from both villages, but also an Independent Lanchester Parish
Councillor with Burnhope connections, me. Pat Glass MP was also there,
prompting MPs on the balcony to point: "Oh, look, there's Pat Glass."
Pat waved, and they waved back. Her two-year-old granddaughter had a whale of a time dancing to the brass band and applauding whenever it finished a set.

In which vein, as ever the speeches had to hold their own against the fairground attractions and the drinking. But as ever, they did so. Even Ed Miliband telling a hundred thousand people,
plus the television cameras, that he was going to reopen the mines (and he
really did say that) was not as big a story as John Hendy QC telling a hundred
thousand people, plus the television cameras, that Rupert Murdoch had lied to
him under oath at the Leveson Inquiry. Tom Watson was not only rapturously
received, but he also made a speech which had some people in tears. If there
were to be a Deputy Leadership Election, then he could give even Jon Cruddas a
run for his money.

Watson
was not the only speaker to denounce Rupert Murdoch as the Labour Movement's
enemy continuously throughout his involvement in British affairs. Indeed, only
Ed Miliband, and the two Spanish miners' leaders speaking through an
interpreter, failed to do so. It was never quite stated, but obviously meant,
that Murdoch's support for Tony Blair only served to prove the point. This was
applauded by the Leader, who did not correct the chairman, Davey Hopper of the
Durham Miners' Association, after he had called for the purge of Progress while
introducing the Leader's speech. Tony Benn puffed away. Open air or no open
air, only he could still get away with that.

Shami
Chakrabati compared being invited to address the Big Meeting to becoming a
mother, and Mark Serwotka was a speaker despite his union's recently having
voted to fund its own parliamentary candidates, while Bob Crow was also on the
platform that featured Ed Miliband, with Tom Watson repeatedly calling for both
the RMT and the FBU to reaffiliate to Labour. There was no heckling or anything
like that when he made this call; he was really announcing an impending fact
rather than making a suggestion.

Whereas
Serwotka's PCS is not and has never been affiliated, and his presence as a
speaker alongside Miliband and Watson strongly suggested that such candidates
are only going to be put up against sitting Blairite MPs or anyone of such mind
who might somehow manage to be selected as a PPS, an extremely unlikely event
in view of the composition of the veto-wielding National Executive Committee
these days. In other words, the PCS candidates will be the official
Labour candidates in all but name, loyal to the Leader of the Labour Party
while their nominally Labour opponents are not.

When Ed
Miliband's speech came, it called for the rejection of divisions between the
public and private sectors, emphasising the dependence of each on the other.
There were dutiful recitations of Labour's past achievements, but that and the
promise on coal were the main points. I could have written it, and people whom I
know probably did write it. It was delivered on a platform featuring, just out of sight
of the close-up cameras, an advertisement for the Morning Star,
repeatedly commended by Davey Hopper as "our only alternative". The
Guardian can take that. A bit unfair on the Mirror titles, though.
But even so. After all, even of those, only The People backed Ed
Miliband for Leader, although its then Editor has since been moved up to
overall charge.

That
day's Morning Star, delivered free at the expense of the organisers to
those attending an event addressed by the Leader of a Labour Party with a
commanding poll lead, featured two articles by sitting MPs first elected in
2010, Grahame Morris on why Miliband was right to turn up, and Ian Lavery on why
the future of British energy was coal, exactly as that Leader said in his
speech, placing the next Prime Minister in precise agreement with a man who
until two years ago was President of the NUM as the chosen successor of Arthur
Scargill.

That
newspaper also informed the reader that in the elections to the MPs' Section
(yes, the MPs' Section) of the National Executive Committee, the poll had been
topped by Dennis Skinner, which is not bad for 80 years old, with the other two
seats going to Margaret Beckett and to Steve Rotheram, former Lord Mayor of Liverpool
and "the only brickie in Parliament". Although not mentioned, the
only other candidate was the fiercely anti-war Yasmin Qureshi.

Two of the three
successful candidates voted against Second Reading of the Lords Reform Bill,
and all four candidates could be described as at least broadly Eurosceptical,
in Skinner's and Beckett's cases, at least, firmly so. Two were first elected to Parliament in 2010, and the other two have been there since the Year Dot. Mind the gap. I repeat that this was
the Section for MPs only, just as the one in which Progress was recently routed
and Ken Livingstone given the top spot was for "ordinary members"
only.

Also
featured in the Morning Star, "Incorporating the Daily Worker", "For Peace and Socialism", was
an article by Canon Dr David Kennedy of Durham Cathedral, whose coped figure I
ribbed gently about it later on, although his only complaint was that he had not been able to get hold of a copy, since by the time that he had made it into the
city centre only the Socialist Worker had still been available and its
vendors had not taken kindly when he had asked them where he might obtain the Morning
Star.

It had asked him: it had specifically wanted an article explaining the
Cathedral Service. Well, of course it had. That will have surprised no one who
knew the first thing about these things. Probably including Baroness Warsi,
although she would never admit it. David did not answer when I asked if the
Cathedral Sunday services would now be listed in every Saturday edition, as in
the Daily Telegraph. To which I can only say, to him or to anyone else:
don't ask, don't get.

The
Service was fabulous, with the Lord Bishop of Durham blessing the banners of
Burnhope and others. With a reading from the Book of Job by Rodney
Bickerstaffe. With a sermon by a moving, and visibly moved, Dr Leslie Griffiths,
Labour peer, sometime President of the Methodist Conference, and retired
Superintendent Minister of Wesley's Chapel, London. And with Jerusalem at the end. Of course.
Just as the Miners' Hymn, Gresford, had been played before the speeches, with
the whole platform standing in silence for it. Of course. Again, to anyone who
knows anything about these things...

From
rural Independent Councillors marching under a trade union banner, to
a Residentiary Canon of Durham Cathedral penning an article for the Morning
Star at its request, to the Leader and another Shadow Cabinet member speaking from the same platform as the Director of Liberty and as a General Secretary whose unaffiliated union will be funding its own candidates, to that Leader's denunciation of rivalry between the sectors (and the regions) explicitly and thus of rivalry between the classes at least implicitly: the Alternative Coalition around Ed Miliband that
became obvious on paper at the local elections became very obvious indeed in
solid flesh at the Durham Miners' Gala. And, one trusts, at the Tolpuddle
Martyrs Festival, too. These last two days will be remembered, and more than
remembered, for a very, very, very long time.

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About Me

Founder, Proprietor, Publisher and Editor of The Lanchester Review since 2013. Founder, Proprietor (for now), Publisher (for now) and Editor-in-Chief of Lanchester Books since 2014. Charity volunteer and administrator since 1994. Freelance journalist since 1996. Supply teacher and market research worker from 2002 until prevented by disability. Member of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham since 2006. Preventing the University of Durham’s undergraduates’ degrees from getting the way of their education since 2000.
Elected Parish Councillor from the age of 21 until I stood down voluntarily in 2013. During that time, Lanchester was among the first in the country to secure power of wellbeing, power of general competence, and Quality Parish Council Status.
At 21, I began eight years as a governor of a primary school which, at the time of my appointment, still had the same Headteacher as when I had been a pupil there. Three weeks short of 22, I found myself in the same position when I began eight years as a governor of a comprehensive school.
Since May 2013, a member of the Durham’s Police and Crime Commissioner's Community Panel.